Holbein Part 5

Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE 18 THE MEYER-MADONNA _Oils. Grand Ducal Collection, Darmstadt_

Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE 19 THE MEYER-MADONNA [_Later Version. Held by many to be a copy_]

_Oils. Dresden Gallery_

In the Darmstadt work the Virgin's dress is wholly different in tone from her robe at Dresden; otherwise the colouring aims to be the same in each. Here, in the original altar-piece, it is a greenish-blue. The lower sleeves are golden, a line of white at the wrist, and a filmier one within the bodice. Her girdle is a rich red; her mantle a greenish-grey. Over this latter her fair hair streams like softest suns.h.i.+ne. Above her n.o.ble, pity-full face sits her crown of fine gold and pearls.

The woman kneeling nearest to the Madonna is commonly believed to be Meyer's first wife, who had died in 1511, the mother of one child--a daughter--by a previous husband. Between this stepdaughter and Meyer there was considerable litigation over her property. The younger woman, whose chin-cloth is dropped in the painting though worn like the others in the drawing for her portrait, is Meyer's second wife, Dorothea Kannegiesser, whom he married about 1512, and with whom he was painted by Holbein in 1516. The sombre garments of both women are echoed by the black of Meyer's hair and coat, the latter lined with light-brown fur.

Meyer's face, in its manly intensity of devotional feeling, is a wonderful piece of psychology in the Darmstadt picture.

In the drawing for the young girl, Anna Meyer, who kneels beside her mother with a red rosary in her hands, she has her golden-brown hair hanging loose down her back, as befits a girl of thirteen. But in the painting it is coiled in glossy braids beneath some ceremonial head-dress; this is richly embroidered with pearls, with red silk ta.s.sel and a wreath of red and white flowers above it. This head-dress is painted with much more beautiful precision in the older work, and the expression of the girl's face is much more deeply devout; her hands, too, are decidedly superior to those of the Dresden work.

This is true also of the carpet, patterned in red and green, with touches of white and black, on a ground of deep yellow. The Dresden carpet is conspicuously inferior in finish and colour to that of Darmstadt, so much so that Waagen and others, who believe the former a replica, think a pupil or a.s.sistant may have been responsible for this and other details, which for some reason Holbein himself was unable to finish.

The elder boy, with the tumbled brown hair, dressed in a light-brown coat trimmed with red-brown velvet, and hose of cinnabar-red, with decorations of gold clasps and tags on fine blue cords, has a yellowish-green portemonnaie, with ta.s.sels of dull blue hanging from his girdle. All the carnations are superb, and in the Darmstadt picture the infant Christ wears a sweet and happy smile. In that of Dresden He looks sad and ill; a fact which has given rise to the theory Ruskin adopted--that the Virgin had put down the divine Child and taken up Meyer's ailing one. But the absence of wonder on the faces of Meyer's family, and, indeed, the familiar affection of the elder boy, would of itself negative this theory. I have my own ideas as to this point, but it would serve no useful purpose to go into them in this place. Of these two sons of Meyer there is no other record. Anna alone survived her mother, who married again after Meyer's death. Anna's daughter married Burgomaster Remigius Fasch, or Fesch, whose grandson--Remigius Fasch, counsellor-at-law--was the well-known art collector whose collection and ma.n.u.script are also in the Basel Museum, where there is an oil-copy of the Dresden Meyer-Madonna.

Even the cool eye of Walpole was warmed by this great work of 1526, as he saw it in the Dresden painting then hanging in the Palazzo Delfino at Venice. "For the colouring," he exclaims, "it is beautiful beyond description; and the carnations have that enamelled bloom so peculiar to Holbein, who touched his works till not a touch remained discernible."

Twenty years earlier Edward Wright had written of Meyer's youngest boy--"The little naked boy could hardly have been outdone, if I may dare to say such a word, by Raphael himself." And in our own day that fine and measured critic, Mrs. Jameson, has spoken for generation upon generation who have thought the same thought before the Meyer-Madonna of Dresden, when she says of it: "In purity, dignity, humility and intellectual grace this exquisite Madonna has never been surpa.s.sed; not even by Raphael. The face, once seen, haunts the memory."

When Wright and Walpole saw this Dresden work at Venice, it was supposed to be "the family of Sir Thomas More"--_Meier_ having slipped into "More" in the course of centuries, which had retained only the vivid impression of Holbein's a.s.sociation with the latter, and knew that the painter had drawn him in the midst of his family. That living a.s.sociation was now, late in the summer of this year, about to begin.

CHAPTER III

CHANCES AND CHANGES

1526-1530

First visit to England--Sir Thomas More; his home and portraits--The Windsor drawings--Bishop Fisher--Archbishop Warham--Bishop Stokesley--Sir Henry Guildford and his portrait--Nicholas Kratzer--Sir Bryan Tuke--Holbein's return to Basel--Portrait-group of his wife and two eldest children; two versions--Holbein's children, and families claiming descent from him--Iconoclastic fury--Ruined arts--Death of Meyer zum Hasen--Another Meyer commissions the last paintings for Basel--Return to England--Description of the Steelyard--Portraits of its members--George Gysze--Basel Council summons Holbein home--"The Amba.s.sadors" at the National Gallery; accepted identification--Coronation of Queen Anne Boleyn--Lost paintings for the Guildhall of the Steelyard; the Triumphs of Riches and Poverty--The great Morett portrait; identifications--Holbein's industry and fertility--Designs for metal-work and other drawings--Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.

Two years earlier Erasmus had evidently thought that London was the true stage for such a genius as Holbein's, and More had written that he would gladly do all he could to further the painter's success if he should decide to visit England. More himself called Holbein "a marvellous artist" for his portrait of Erasmus, and could not but be delighted with the beautiful little woodcut which opened Froben's edition of his own _Utopia_.

This ill.u.s.tration represents More and his only son seated with aegidius, or Peter Gillis, in the latter's own garden at Antwerp, listening to the tale of _Utopia_ from the ancient comrade of Amerigo Vespucci. And very likely Holbein himself sat in this garden, in the late summer of 1526, when he was pa.s.sing through Antwerp to England. He had a letter of introduction from Erasmus to aegidius, as also to the host who was expecting him in England--Sir Thomas More.

Van Mander says that long before this the Earl of Arundel, when pausing at Basel, had been so much pleased with Holbein's works in that city that he had urged the painter to forsake it for London. But it would pretty surely have been the promise of More's influence which actually induced him to try his fortune so far afield. And by the autumn of 1526 he was one of that happy company which the genial soul of More drew around him in his new home in "Chelsea Village," where Beaufort Row now has its north end. Here the master's love of every art, and apt.i.tude in affairs, filled his hospitable mansion with wit and music and joyous strenuousness. Here he was the idol of his family, as well as the King's friend. Henry himself must surely have shuddered could he have pictured that face, over which thought and humour were ever chasing one another like sun and shadow on the lawn, black above London Bridge and flung at last from it into the Thames only a few years hence. Now it turned to his own all life and loyalty, as he laid his arm around More's shoulders while they wandered between the garden beds of Chelsea.

Early in 1527, probably, Holbein had finished the fine portrait of his host, which is now in Mr. Huth's collection. The study for this oil painting is among the Windsor drawings (Plate 20), as also one for the large family picture now lost, if indeed it was ever completed by Holbein; a matter of some doubt, notwithstanding Van Mander's account of it in the possession of the art-collector Van Loo. An outline sketch of it, or for it, he certainly made. And that precious pen-and-ink outline,--with the name of each written above or below the figure in More's hand, and notes as to alterations to be made in the final composition in Holbein's hand,--is now in the Basel Museum; having come into Amerbach's possession as the heir of Erasmus.

Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE 20 SIR THOMAS MORE _Chalks. Windsor Castle_

In Mr. Huth's oil portrait More is wearing a dark-green coat trimmed with fur, and showing the purple sleeves of his doublet beneath. His eyes are grey-blue. He never wore a beard, made the fas.h.i.+on by Henry VIII. at the same time that the head was "polled,"--a singularly ugly combination,--until he was in the Tower and grew that beard which he smilingly swept away from the path of the executioner's axe. "It," he said with astonis.h.i.+ng self-possession, could be "accused of no treason."

In 1527, however, no shadow of tragedy seemed possible unless the suspicion of it slept in More's own heart when he said to his son-in-law, in answer to some flattering congratulation on the King's favour, "Son Roper, if my head could win him a castle in France, my head should fall."

But for these superb drawings in the Royal Collection at Windsor, we should know nothing at all of many a portrait Holbein painted--all among the immediate friends of More and Erasmus on this first visit to England; nor, for that matter, of many a portrait painted in later years. And how little these can be trusted to tell the whole tale of achievement is shown by the fact that they include no studies for a number of oil paintings that are still in existence.

Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE 21 JOHN FISHER, BISHOP OF ROCHESTER _Chalks. Windsor Castle_

Of the drawings which represent a lost painting, there is a n.o.ble one of Bishop Fisher, whose execution preceded More's by only a few weeks. A literally venerable head it was (Plate 21), to be the shuttlec.o.c.k of papal defiance and royal determination not to be defied with impunity.

For a.s.suredly if the life of the Bishop of Rochester hung in the balance, as it did, in May, 1535, it was Paul III.'s mad effrontery in making him a Cardinal while he was actually in the Tower under his sovereign's displeasure which heated the King's anger to white-hot brutality. "Let the Pope send him a hat," he thundered, "but I will so provide that he shall wear it on his shoulders, for head he shall have none to set it on!" And on the 17th of that June he made good the savage oath. Yet the painter, after all, has been more potent than the King.

For here lives Fisher. Bishop or Cardinal this is the man, as More loved him.

A striking and richly painted oil portrait of Erasmus's "Maecenas,"

Archbishop Warham, is in the Louvre; of which there are a number of copies, as well as a replica, at Lambeth Palace. The latter was exhibited at Manchester in 1857. The study for these portraits is among the Windsor drawings. The painting in the Louvre has more vividness in the carnations, and the impasto is thicker than at Lambeth; otherwise the two are identical. But for myself I find a more seizing quality in the chalk drawing than in either. There is something in its sunken fading eyes that speaks of the majesty of office as well as its burdens.

Holbein painted a prelate of a very different sort in the oil portrait of John Stokesley, Bishop of London, which is preserved at Windsor Castle. And yet he dared to paint the Truth--now as always. The painting is a masterpiece of modelling and soft transparency of light and shade.

But the truculent, lowering countenance leaves small doubt that the sitter was a gentleman pre-eminently "gey ill to live wi'."

There is another oil painting at Windsor which has not escaped the injuries of time, but is none the less a splendid survival of 1527. This is the portrait of Sir Henry Guildford, Master of the Horse to Henry VIII., and holder of many another office of trust (Plate 22). It has sometimes been thought that the yellow tone of the complexion was due to over-painting, but the chalk drawing shows that it was a personal peculiarity.

Sir Henry, a warm friend to both More and Erasmus, was forty-nine when he sat for this portrait. Under his black fur-trimmed surcoat he wears a doublet of gold brocade. In his hand is the wand of office as Chamberlain, and he is decorated with the collar and badge of the Garter.

He was always a great favourite with the King from the time when the latter came to the throne and young Guildford, then twenty, was one of the gayest, bravest, most loyal spirits about it. Always as ready for a real battle as a mimic one; as clever at writing plays for the King's amus.e.m.e.nt as at acting in them; as good in a revel as at a piece of diplomacy; it is not much wonder that his knighthood in 1512 should but have been the prelude to a long series of promotions.

Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE 22 SIR HENRY GUILDFORD _Oils. Windsor Castle_

The affection of master and man, too, was singularly sincere for a court. Sir Henry loyally supported the King's demand for a divorce, but he was by no means ready to support a second marriage without the papal preliminary. Hence he was not a persona grata to Anne Boleyn. Nor would he stoop to curry favour at the expense of an honest conviction.

When Anne warned him that he was likely to lose his office as soon as she became Queen, he promptly replied that he would spare her all concern about that, and went straight to the King to resign the office of Controller. The latter showed the depth of his affection by urging Sir Henry, twice, to reconsider his determination. But he wisely preferred to quit his apartments under the King's roof,--without, however, breaking the bond of mutual attachment. Five years after this picture was painted he died; in May, 1532. Holbein also painted Lady Guildford's portrait; an oil painting in Mr. Frewer's collection. And Sir Henry selected him as one of the chief artists commissioned to decorate the interior of the Banqueting Hall specially erected for the celebration of the French Alliance in 1527. By all of which it would seem that in securing a new patron the painter had once more made a friend.

Erasmus had asked aegidius to a.s.sist Holbein's success in any way he could. And it was probably owing to a letter from the Antwerp scholar that a friends.h.i.+p of many years sprang up between the painter and Nicholas Kratzer of Munich, then Astronomer-Royal at the Court of Henry VIII. It began with what was once a fine portrait. But the oil painting, now in the Louvre (Plate 23), has suffered such severe injuries as to be but a poor ghost of what it was originally. Only the composition, and the fidelity with which all his friend's scientific instruments are drawn attest Holbein. He never adds a detail for merely pictorial purposes; and never shuffles one that concerns the personality of a sitter. No biographer with his pen sets every straw to show the winds of character and circ.u.mstance more deliberately than does this historian with his brush. Something of Kratzer's shrewd wit,--for he was a "character"--can still be read in his half-destroyed picture. Years later we shall see the intimate friend of both him and his painter writing of the astronomer as a man "brim-full" of humour and fancy. And once, we may be sure, it sparkled in the eyes of Kratzer's portrait as brilliantly as in his own.

Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE 23 NICHOLAS KRATZER _Oils. The Louvre_

In the Munich Gallery there is another portrait in oils which has undergone, if possible, still more atrocious treatment than Kratzer's; yet, like it, still keeps enough of its original charm to rivet attention in any company. This latter is one of the most striking of the half-dozen portraits of Sir Bryan Tuke, which all claim, with more or less of probability, to be paintings by Holbein. And certainly in the years when Sir Bryan was Treasurer of the King's Household it would be natural that the painter, whose salary he regularly disbursed, should gladly oblige him to his utmost.

But the Munich portrait also shows a far deeper bond of interests than one of money. The undercurrent of their natures ran in a groove of more than common sympathy; and to an a.n.a.lyst, such as Holbein was, the reflections behind these inscrutable eyes were full of unusual attraction.

Myself, I feel convinced, for more than one reason, that it is a work of some years later. But as a consensus of authorities places it during this visit, the picture is noticed here. It gains rather than loses by reproduction;--since the painting now shows a strange disagreeable colour most unlike the carnations of Holbein. But the composition is unmistakable (Plate 24). Between the sitter and the green-curtained background stands perhaps the ghastliest of all Holbein's skeletons,--one hand on his scythe, the other grimly pointing at the nearly-spent sands of the hour-gla.s.s. Below the latter is a tablet on which, in Latin, are the words of Job: "My short life, does it not come to an end soon?" and the signature without the date. Sir Bryan wears a fur-trimmed doublet with gold b.u.t.tons; the gold-patterned sleeves revealed by the black silk gown, also trimmed with fur. On a ma.s.sive gold chain he wears a cross of great richness, enamelled with the pierced Hands and Feet. Fine lawn is at throat and wrists; and in one hand he holds his gloves.

Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE 24 SIR BRYAN TUKE _Oils. Munich Gallery_

Before the researches of Eduard His, it used to be sometimes said that Holbein had virtually deserted his family when he left Basel in 1526. We know now, however, that whatever were the moral wrongs which he suffered or committed, he never forsook the duty of providing for his wife and children in no ungenerous proportion to his means.

The records show that the fruit of his two years' industry was used to acquire a comfortable home which remained the property of his wife. And the inventory of its contents at Elsbeth's death, some six years after Holbein's death, proves that this home was to the full as well furnished and comfortable as was usual with people of similar condition.

In the summer of 1528 the painter bade farewell for ever to Sir Thomas More's gracious Chelsea home. He took with him the pen-and-ink sketch for a large picture of More in the midst of his family, which has been already referred to. This was for Erasmus, who had temporarily abandoned Basel,--now so utterly unlike the Basel of former years,--and had sought the more sympathetic atmosphere of Freiburg. Bonifacius Amerbach, from the same causes, was here with Erasmus for some time. So that something like the old Froben days must have seemed still about them as the three friends sat together and talked of all that had come and gone.

But by the latter part of August Holbein was back in that now sadly-altered Basel whence his best friends were reft by trouble or death. And on the 29th of August, 1528, he bought the house next to Froben's _Buchhaus_, the deed attesting that he did so in person, in company with Elsbeth. The price, 300 guldens or florins, was by no means the small one it now seems, nor could the painter pay the whole sum at once. He paid down one-third, and secured the rest by a mortgage. The site of this house is now occupied by 22 St. Johann Vorstadt. Three years later, March 28th, 1531, Holbein bought out a disagreeable neighbour; and thus added to his two-storied house overlooking the Rhine the little one-storied cottage which cost him only seventy guldens. The factory at No. 20 now partially covers this latter site.

Fifty years ago both of the original houses were still standing; quaint, crumbling, affecting monuments of days when Holbein's voice and Holbein's step rang through their rooms, when Frau Elsbeth swept and garnished them; and when four children added their links to the chain of a marriage which Holbein was now manfully trying to make the best of.

It must have been in the year after the purchase of the larger house that he painted the group of his wife and the two children she had then borne him. This life-size group, done in oils on paper, is now in the Basel Museum (Plate 25). The stoical sincerity with which they are represented, and the hard outline produced by cutting out the work to mount it on its wood panel, makes a somewhat repellent impression at the first glance. And this is in no way dispersed by studying Elsbeth's traits. But the painting itself is a tour-de-force. By sheer Quality Holbein has invested these portraits,--a middle-aged, coa.r.s.e-figured, unamiable-looking woman, a very commonplace infant, and a bright-faced boy,--with the prestige inseparable from an achievement of a high order.

Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE 25 ELSBETH, HOLBEIN'S WIFE, WITH THEIR TWO ELDEST CHILDREN _Oils. Basel Museum_

Clearly Elsbeth Holbein was not one to give up the costume of her youth simply because she would have been well advised to do so; and the cut and fas.h.i.+on of her dress remains almost identical with the drawing in the Louvre. Her l.u.s.treless light-brown hair is covered with a gauzy veil and a reddish-brown cap. Her brown stuff upper garment, trimmed with thin fur, shows a dark-green dress beneath it. The baby wears a gown of undyed woollen material, and the boy a jacket of dark bluish green.